Out of all furniture items, the chair may be the primary one. While most other pieces (save for the bed) are designed to support objects, the chair supports your human form. The term chair was looked upon here in the most general sense, from stool to throne to further forms for example a bench and sofa, which can be looked upon as extended or connected chairs, and whose character (i.e., whether they are intended for sitting or reclining) is not overtly defined.
The social history of the chair is as exciting as its history as art and craft. The chair is not merely a physical support and aesthetic artwork; it can also be an indicator of social rank. In the historical royal courts there were clear distinctions between being seated on a chair with arms, or a chair with a back but without arms, and having to sit on a stool. From the recent century, a director’s and/or manager’s chair has been regarded as an indicator of superior status, like in democratic governments the speaker sits on an elevated platform.
As a furniture purpose, the chair can be used for a variety of different forms. There are chairs designed to attend to man’s age and physical abilities (the high chair, the wheelchair) and to show his standing in society (the executive chair, the throne). Since past times there were chairs for birthing (birth chairs); in the 20th century, there have been chairs for ending life (the electric chair). We have chairs with one, two, three, or four legs, chairs with or without arms, and chairs with or without backs. We have chairs that can be folded for easy storage, chairs on wheels, and chairs on runners.
Our contemporary lifestyle has developed special chairs for automobiles and aircraft. Each and every one of these chair kinds have been evolved to conform to evolving human uses. Because of its close connection with man, the chair comes to its full significance only when being utilised. Although it isn’t relevant to one’s appreciation of a cupboard or a bureau if there might be things inside or not, a chair is really understood and fairly tested by a person sitting on it, because chair and sitter suit one another. Thus the individual limbs of a chair have been named likened to the elements of a human shape: arms, legs, feet, back, and seat.
Because the elemental function of a chair is to support our body, its credit is evaluated principally for how suitably it measures up to this practical purpose. Within the creation of a chair, the builder is bound with particular static laws and principal measurements. Within these limitations, however, the chair designer has extensive freedom.
The history of the chair lasted over dates of several thousand years. There are civilizations that made individual chair types, expressive of the principal endeavour in the industries of craft and aesthetics. Among such cultures, special mention needs to be made of ancient Egypt and Greece; China; Spain and The Netherlands in the 17th century; England in the 18th century; and France in the 18th century during the ascendancy of Louis XV and Louis XVI.
Egypt
Two ancient Egyptian chair forms, both the construct of expert scheme, are now seen from tomb findings. The first one of them is a four-legged chair with a back, the other a folding stool. The original Egyptian chair would have four legs structured not unlike those of a designated animal, a curved seat, with a sloping back supported above vertical stretchers. From this design a solid triangular structure was crafted. There seems to be no notable difference from the structure of Egyptian thrones and chairs for common non-royals. The simple difference lied in the type of ornamentation, in the choice of more costly inlays. The Egyptian folding stool probably was crafted as an easily packed seat for army. As a camp stool that stool existed until much later points in time. But the stool then also was created for the use of a ceremonial seat, its original task as a folding stool neglected or forgotten. This can already be noted, from as early as 1366–57 BC in two stools, created in ebony with ivory inlay work and gold mounts, from the tomb of Tutankhamen. They were in the shape of folding stools but aren’t able to be folded as the seats were worked of wood. The easy manufacture of the folding stool, composed of two frames that turn on metal bolts and have a seat of leather or fabric fastened between them, came again some time later during the Bronze Age folding chairs of Scandinavia and northern Germany. The most recognised of this form is the folding stool, from ashwood, found at Guldhøj (National Museum in Copenhagen).
Greece and Rome
The significant Greek chair, the klismos, is found not with any ancient fossil still in form but as found in a trove of pictorial evidence. The most well known is the klismos posited on the Hegeso Stele at the Dipylon burial area just out of Athens (c. 410 BC). The klismos is a chair with a backward-sloping, curved backboard and four curving legs, only two of them are visible. These strange legs were likely to be crafted with bent wood and were therefore put under a large amount of pressure under the weight of the sitter. The joints attaching the legs to the frame of the seat were therefore super solid and were visibly signified.
The Romans emulated the Greek design; designs of statues of seated Romans display examples of a denser and in appearance somewhat less delicately built klismos. Both features, the light and heavy, were revived as part of the Classicist period. The klismos influence is used in French Empire chairs, in English Regency, and in some forms of marked uniqueness in Denmark and Sweden around 1800.
China
The history of the chair in China is not able to be charted as long as the history of the chair in Egypt and Greece. Since the Tang dynasty (AD 618–907) an unscathed collection of images and paintings was kept, with images of the inside and exterior of Chinese households and the furniture. Also preserved from the 16th century are a collection of chairs constructed from wood or lacquered wood, that display an interesting similarity to images of older chairs.
Just like in Egypt, two major chair forms existed in China: a chair with four legs and a folding stool. The four-legged chair can be seen both with and without arms though always having its square seat and straight stiles (vertical side supports) to support the back. In one type, however, the stiles are lightly curved on top of the arms in order to sit right with the shape of the S-shaped back splat (the basic upright of a chairback). Each of the three sections are mortised in the yoke-like top rail. Despite that the style of this back splat later had an inspiration for English chairs from the Queen Anne period, wooden sections that could merely to a restricted capability reinforce corner joints (and then are loose to top it off) signify a design exclusive to Chinese chairs. The four legs pass through the seat frame, which stops over the rounded staves. All members are round in section or have rounded edges—referable perchance to the bamboo tradition. The seat is uncomfortable and occasionally had a plaited seat. These chairs required the sitter to stay stiff and upright; when too much pressure is placed on the back, the chair has a habit of falling over. In patriarchal Chinese households of this period armchairs likely were kept only for elderly individuals, for they were greatly respected.
The Chinese folding stool is thought to have taken to China from the West. It does not differ very much from the Egyptian and Scandinavian folding stools, but it possesses a difference in that the top rail is delicately fixed to the two legs of the stool by using a curved member, which is usually seen with metal mounts. From a Western viewpoint the overall effect of these furniture forms is stylized. The manufacture and decoration parts are combined in a way that is all at once naïve and refined. The patchwork appearance is an upshot of the manner that the individual parts do not seem to have been put together by either glue or screws, but had been mortised on one another and locked into position in the style of a Chinese puzzle.
Spain: 17th century
The Golden Age of Spain during the 17th century also had its signature on the chair. Artworks display a design of chair with a relatively crude wooden frame; a back and seat, nailed on, possessing two layers of leather, with horsehair stuffing between the layers, stitched to bring out a pattern of tiny pads. The front board and a similar board from the back could be folded after unscrewing some tiny iron hooks. Thus the chair was a readily portable piece of furniture in traveling which, in the same period, granted the status of a four-legged, high-backed armchair.
The Netherlands: 17th century
A low, square, upholstered style of chair is evidenced in engravings of the inside of rich Dutch homes by Abraham Bosse, a French artist, and in paintings by the Dutch artists Johannes Vermeer and Gerard Terborch. Although this type of chair can also be found in countries where Dutch styles of interior decoration and Dutch furniture won preference, it is not certain that the design actually started in The Netherlands. Normally, the legs of the chair will be smooth, round in section, and of slim shape; they are in some cases baluster-shaped (vase-shaped) or twisted. It is unquestionably a bourgeois piece of furniture and was crafted in considerable quantities, as indicated from one of Abraham Bosse’s engravings, in which there is a row of such chairs lined up along a wall. The form asserts itself by its shapely proportions and expensive upholstery in gilt leather or fabric framed with fringes.
France and England: 17th and 18th centuries
The French Rococo chair in its most mature of forms—that is, as created in Paris around 1750—disseminated over most of Europe and has been imitated or copied in the mid-20th century. The model owes this popularity to a combination of comfort and delicacy. The seat suits to the human body and permits a relaxed sitting position. The back is bow-shaped, the legs curved. Usually the seat and back are upholstered, and there are small upholstered pads covering the armrests. Smooth transitions are made between seat frame, legs, and back disguise all the joints, which are constructed strongly on craftsmanlike methodology in spite of the absence of stretchers between the legs.
French Rococo chairs and imitations thereof use wood of relatively thick density; but all the members are deeply molded, all extraneous wood has been sanded away, and more expensive examples would be further embellished with intricately delicate and decorative engravings. The wood might be varnished, stained, painted, or gilded. Silk damask or tapestry can be used for all upholstery on the seat, back, and armrests; cane is occasionally used instead of upholstery.
English chairs in the 18th century were more variable in style than the French. The French taste for stylistic uniformity, which spread from the highest circles in Paris and Versailles over most of France and was popular in many parts of the Continent, had no parallel in England. Prior to 1740, the most commonly used wood was walnut; thereafter, and for the rest of the century, it was mahogany. Walnut, though beautiful in hue, was soft and therefore less suited to wood carving than to rounded, curving forms. Outer surfaces, such as the back and seat frame, were usually veneered. During the walnut period, highly overstuffed armchairs, covered with leather or embroidered material, were also developed. The best upholstery of this period is precisely and firmly modelled and accentuated by braiding or tacks. When imports of mahogany became common, no specifically new chair designs appeared, but the character of the woodwork changed. Mahogany, having a firmer, closer grain, could be cut thinner, which meant that individual parts of the chair could be more slender in shape. Mahogany also lent itself better to carving than walnut. Carving was concentrated more on the arms and back than on the legs, which as a rule were straight and smooth with chamfered (bevelled) edges and molding. There was a wealth of variety in chairback designs, featuring elegant, pierced, vase-shaped splats or two upright posts connected by horizontal slats (ladderback).
Alongside the French Rococo chair and the best English chairs in walnut and mahogany, the stick-back chair was relatively unaffected by the stylistic changes of the day. Originally a medieval form, known, for example, from paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and still found in mid-20th century in the churches and inns of southern Europe, the stick-back chair (in all of its variations) consists basically of a solid, saddle-shaped seat into which the legs, back staves, and possibly the armrests are directly mortised. This typically peasant form underwent a renewal and a process of refinement in England and America during the 18th century. Under the name Windsor chair (a term that seems to have been used for the first time in 1731) or Philadelphia chair, it became reknowned and was widely distributed throughout the world.
Late 18th to 20th century
Within the Neoclassical period, no basic changes took place in chair forms, but legs became straight and dimensions lighter. Backs in the shape of classical vases replaced the fanciful outlines of the Rococo period. Around 1800, freely executed imitations of Greek and Roman chairs of the klismos type, with curved legs and backrest, appeared. French chairs of the Empire period, executed in dark mahogany and embellished with ornate bronze mounts, created a ponderous effect.
In cheaper versions of inferior workmanship, bourgeois chairs of the 19th century carried on the traditions of the 17th and 18th centuries. The only real innovations were the bentwood (wood that has been bent and shaped) chairs in beech that became popular all over the world and were still made in the 20th century. Around 1900 the continental Art Nouveau and Jugendstil styles (French and German styles characterized by organic foliate forms, sinuous lines, and non-geometric forms), and the Arts and Crafts movement in England (established by the English poet and decorator William Morris to reintroduce idealized standards of medieval craftsmanship), gave rise to original chair designs by Eugène Gaillard in France, Henry van de Velde in Belgium, Josef Hoffman in Austria, Antonio Gaudí in Spain, and Charles Rennie Mackintosh in Scotland. These new furniture styles did not exercise wide, let alone decisive, influence. The Art Nouveau chairs designed by the French architect Hector Guimard, for example, are collector’s pieces, but his name is known to a broader public only because of his fanciful entrances to the Paris Métro.
Modern
After World War I, the Bauhaus school in Germany became a creative centre for revolutionary thinking, resulting, for example, in tubular steel chairs designed by the architects Marcel Breuer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and others. During World War II, the aircraft industry accelerated the development of laminated wood and molded plastic furniture. The dominant chair forms of this period go back to designs by Alvar Aalto, Bruno Mathsson, and Charles and Ray Eames. Rapid technical developments, in conjunction with an ever-increasing interest in human-factors engineering, or ergonomics, indicate that completely new chair forms will probably be evolved in the future.
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